It was just at this point in the conversation that a startling clamor was heard from downstairs. The ladies were sitting in the "spare chamber" on the second floor, as they were apt to do of a morning. The noise drew nearer. It was unmistakably a cry of mingled wrath and pain, and it was accompanied by the sound of hurrying feet. Children's shoes were scuffling up the old oak staircase. It sounded as if at least a dozen pairs of feet were hurrying toward the live Misses Middleton. The door opened with a burst, and into the room came Theodora. Blood was streaming from her nose, tears from her eyes, and in her arms she carried--was it? could it be? The five Misses Middleton looked, and looked again. Their niece was bringing into their presence a dead kitten! She was accompanied by two of her friends the Hoyt boys, but they, dismayed by the sight of a circle of five ladies, retreated into the hall, and peered through the crack of the half-open door. Still another was at the foot of the stairs, not daring to come up higher. "Theodora, what is it?" cried Miss Middleton, while Miss Melissa shuddered and felt for her smelling-salts. She was afraid of cats, even of dead ones. "It's a dear little kitten, Aunt Adaline, and it is dead. It will never breathe again. Oh, that horrible boy, that Andy Morse! I wish I had killed _him_ dead! But I gave him a black eye, I know I did." "A black eye! Theodora, I insist upon knowing the cause of this uproar. And the blood! Have you been hurt?" "Let me wash it away from your face," said Miss Thomasine; "but first, if it is possible, Theodora, I think you had better get rid of that--that cat." "Poor little kitten! We are going to have a nice funeral to make up to it for all its sufferings. And I am not really much hurt, Aunt Tom. It's a nose-bleed, so it looks as if I were. The boy punched me right in the nose. But I kicked and scratched him well, I can tell you." The five aunts rose to their feet as one woman. They looked at Theodora, and then they looked at one another. Finally they all sat down again. "Give that animal to those boys in the hall to take away, and then give an account of yourself," commanded Miss Middleton. Theodora hesitated for a moment, and then she retired to the hall, where she held a whispered conference with her waiting friends. "As nice a box as you can find," were her last words, "and loads of flowers. Dig it pretty deep. I'll be there as soon as I can." Again there was the sound of clattering shoes upon the stairs, and Theodora returned to her aunts. A maid was sent for, and the marks of her recent conflict were washed away, to which proceedings she submitted quietly, and then in a clean white apron she came back once more. She closed the door into the hall at her aunts' request, and opened the conversation at once.